The barn structure to which we refer to as the “Dairy Barn” was built in 1913. The structure was raised in the typical “Barn Raising” fashion of the day. Friends and neighbors came to help in he raising. Men and horses would use pulleys, ropes poles and other devises to raise large timbers for the frame.

This barn was made entirely from Oak. The timber for this barn may have come from the Boice creek area near the Reynolds farms on Reynolds Ridge Rd., near Hwy. County U. The oak timber beams were fashioned together with wood pegs. No nails were used. However there were some large nuts and bolts used to hold some beams that overlapped in some of the larger spans of the barn.

The wall boards are of well-cut oak, which were nailed on with square nails. The roof was of wood shingle construction, most likely of cedar. The foundation is of mason cut limestone held together with a sand mortar. It is unknown where this stone was taken from.

	Dairy barn with wooden silo. 1910s

The lower area was where the cows were milked, work-horses, calves, and bull were penned. The floor was cemented with a shallow pit behind the area where the cows were stanchioned to hold manure. This pit was cleaned out with forks and loaded onto a manure carrier, which was a tub that was stationed on a track carrier that ran the length of the barn and outside into an area to be dumped.

A Badger brand barn cleaner was added in the 1960s. The manure troughs behind the cows were deepened and a chain and paddle system was installed in the troughs. Powered by a large electric motor, the system removed the manure and deposited into a manure spreader for dispersal later on the fields.

The south side was the area for the milking cows. There were a total of nineteen stanchions. In the middle of the barn was the alleyway, roughly 6-8 feet wide. On the north East Side was the original milk house, which was framed within the barn structure and held the milking equipment. West of this room were three pens which held the on average six work horses. Aside these pens were the pens for the calves. The horse pens were removed in the 1960s and the calves pens as well in the 1980s to be replaced with stanchioning areas for milking. There was then 27 areas for milking.

In the Northwest corner was the bullpen. The bullpen was a virtual jail. It was made of steel pipes cemented into the floor with a large iron gate. Robert VanNatta told me of a bull they once had when he was growing up. It was a large bull with long horns. Angry and restless about being penned up and away from the “ladies” he would go around the pen running his horns over the pipes creating the constant “clink, clink, clink...” sound. I envisioned the old jail movies with the prisoners running tin cups over the bars.

Automatic watering cups were added during the 1940s, easing the work required to house the cattle during harsh weather. A newer Milk House was later added to the Northeast side of the structure. The upper level was a grainary and the bottom level was used to house the bulk tank and other equipment.

On the Southern side of this barn is a lean-too shed. It is uncertain if this was part of the original structure. However there are pictures from the later 1910s with it on the barn. This part of the barn was a resting, feeding, and sheltering area for the cattle. The floor was dirt until the 1960s when it was cemented.

On the southeast outside corner of this barn stood the silo. It was the wood silo that was located with the old barn that was torn down during the early years of VanNatta ownership.

This silo was replaced with a Coroc (hollow clay block) structure. It was 12' w by 30' h in size. This structure stood until it was razed in the mid 1970s.